EDITORIAL: Anticipating a stimulating lecture
THE inaugural Owen Arthur Memorial Lecture will come off next Monday. Since economics and policy measures are very much on the radar these days, one will want to suggest that expectations will be high about what will be the roadmap for Caribbean countries going forward.
The lecture will be presented by Dr. Gene Leon who recently took up his position as head of the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), the regionally-owned financial institution.
At the recent CDB annual meeting Dr. Leon had a lot to say on how the Bank will be operating going forward and what its programme will entail for the institution as well as for its Borrowing Member Countries (BMCs).
Arthur who served for 14 years as Prime Minister of Barbados, has championed small developing countries, and was a strong supporter of Caribbean integration.
He more than anyone else has been in the forefront in forging the Caribbean Single Market and Economy (CSME) which remains the flagship for Caribbean unity.
One of the things that Arthur felt very strongly about is that Caribbean islands must draw more on their own strengths and human capital, instead of depending too much on foreign agencies, particularly the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to get them out of tough situations.
To this end this newspaper makes reference to a speech he had delivered in Grenada and which was extremely useful and timely for what lies ahead.
He had observed repeatedly that the contemporary Caribbean does not face the best of circumstances nor does it enjoy good fortune.
Indeed, Arthur reasoned that the totality of the economic adjustment required in this region will be the sum of those undertaken by governments in response to national challenges, those carried out by enterprises to to improve and reform their balance sheets, and those by the people to ensure they can enjoy successful livelihoods.
Against this background it was noted that in addition to its longstanding challenges, our region, now has to grapple with stresses which are of a more recent vintage, which are gathering in scope and intensity and which are now so massive as not to lend themselves to easy resolution.
So as Barbados and the Caribbean countries look to a post-COVID-19 economic recovery, countries either singly or collectively must come up with strategies to forge their own revival from that pandemic, even if we admit the scars were there before the pandemic.
As Dr. Leon is now starting out on his sojourn as head of the CDB we think that he is ideally suited to deliver this lecture and to give meaning to what Arthur had always wanted for the Caribbean to function as a single market and single space.
Dr. Leon is a highly respected economist who is very familiar with the issues confronting the Caribbean.
In his address at the bank’s AGM (Annual general meeting), he gave some powerful reminders about the task ahead and shared with those who heard him, how the Bank under his watch will be moving to tackle the issues holding up progress in the Caribbean.
It is expected therefore that the lecture will marry the Bank’s programmes with what the late Arthur had often promoted as the economic agenda for the region.